Aging Elves

[Krow]

A player in my campaign, asked me a question today, and I had to pass this one along. It was something I'd thought about a while ago, but decided to avoid the topic at the time.

Knowing that Elves "do not age" or are not affected by aging effects. What is to keep them from overusing spells such as "haste"? An elven mage/fighter could cast haste upon himself at the beginning of each battle for double the number of attacks, without any negative affects to age. Any input?

[Talaran]

Well, it is a bit of a matter of interpretation. The rulebook states that "They are unaffected by aging attacks..." This doesn't necessarily state that it makes them immune to aging effects, seeing that by casting Haste, they would be aging themselves by an unfortunate side-effect of the magic. Think of it as that the spell is partially fulled by their own life-energy.
Of course, what is being aged a year to an immortal being that will live for thousands of years anyway. Instead of being a youthful-looking immortal, you have that ageless grace about you. *grin* Yet another reason why the Sidhelien are vastly superior to humans.
Truthfully, this issue came up in a game I was in. The general decision was that it held no effect on the elf, seeing that well, elves are immortal and aging him a year held no real effect anyway.

[Miranystadt]

Note that under 3e, Haste no longer ages the subject. But, if elves are truly immortal and just never die or suffer any physical modifiers from old age, they shouldn't be affected by the AD&D2 version's aging whammy.

Brad

[Ariadne]

Elves (in 2nd and 3rd Edition) are immortal, thus immun to aging attacks. If you haste an elf (in 2nd edition), he won't have negative results. The elf ages by the spell, but because he lives thousands of years, those five years are the same as a human ages a second...

[Hallur]

In me campain we use the rule that they can do this, and not suffer any ill consacuences! we feel it is not a huges poseblity for misuse couse lets face it there would be some thing wrong with a campain where allot of elfs would join a goup of humans! they aren´t exacly on good raceil basis! Unless ofcoures the campain was some epic story of the unity of the races, in withc case we in me group disided that the elfs would do things like use the haste spell every time but they suffered the disadvantage of - to svaes versus Preist spells, it is there only disadvantage in the rule book so we use disided to use that!

[Lawgiver]

Even before 3e the aging side effect of haste was thrown out. It always seemed a bit harsh for such a "minor" spell. Instead we use a side effect of not being able to do strenuous activity (-4 to all attacks, -2 damage) after the spell for an equal number of rounds that the haste was used.

With the horrible side effect of the 2e rules, a truly twisted person could cast haste on his human enemies multiple times (over a time period) and age him to death.

:P

[Krow]

Originally posted by Lawgiver


Even before 3e the aging side effect of haste was thrown out. It always seemed a bit harsh for such a "minor" spell. Instead we use a side effect of not being able to do strenuous activity (-4 to all attacks, -2 damage) after the spell for an equal number of rounds that the haste was used.

With the horrible side effect of the 2e rules, a truly twisted person could cast haste on his human enemies multiple times (over a time period) and age him to death.

:P

You'd think that after the first time haste was cast on him, he'd be fast enough to get away :)